


Into The Grey

by KaiBlueOtaku



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inaccurate Catholicism, Medieval Medicine, Moral Ambiguity, Moral Dilemmas, Necromancy, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 21:45:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13467192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaiBlueOtaku/pseuds/KaiBlueOtaku
Summary: In a medieval setting, a priest is excommunicated in his overzealous pursuit of knowledge and healing. When presented with a moral dilemma, he passes out of the clearly defined black and white rules he once knew, and into the grey realms.





	Into The Grey

Father Phillip was probably most well known for his belief that the wellness of the spirit was tightly interwoven with the wellness of the body. He was a skilled healer in his own right, and people came from all over the capital to bring their ill and injured for Father Phillip to minister to.

He was always in search of better ways of healing, always studying ancient dusty tomes discovered in stalls full of other random curiosities at the market.

The bishop over their parish had warned him many times that such malcontentuous and insatiable thirst for knowledge could only lead to trouble, and that to be satisfied was the True Will of God.

Indeed, it was only a matter of time before the bishop found fault with some of the texts which Father Phillip has procured. As his subordinate watched his books burning in the bishop’s hearth, he accused him of heresy.

“All knowledge is of God!” Father Phillip insisted. “He has given us every herb on the earth to eat, and to be used for healing! The Lord himself is called the great physician! It is our purpose to heal the sick!”

The bishop didn't agree. Father Phillip was stripped of his title, excommunicated, and banished to a small, backwater farming town.

Though he did not proclaim himself as a man of the cloth, the villagers knew it by his words and actions, and revered him as such.

One day, after his neighbor's goat fell down a well, he brought the animal in and mended her leg, and so he gained the reputation as a veterinarian. The people all brought their sick livestock and pets to him, and he made them well again. It was what he was called to do.  
It was not long before someone brought him a young boy who had fallen from an apple tree and dislocated his shoulder. The priest set him right, and word spread quickly, and so Father Phillip became again a healer of men, as well as the occasional animal.

It was a sunny afternoon over a year after moving to the small village, and Father Phillip was tending his herb garden when a horse came up the road at some considerable speed. He recognized the young woman driving the poor animal; her name was Lilith, and she was the oldest of six daughters, with the seventh and youngest child, a little boy, being only a babe in arms.

Father Phillip stood and watched her come up, and realized she had some sort of load slung over the saddle. As she neared, the priest made for the door of his cottage; he could see it was her father, the blacksmith, and the both of them and the horse were covered in blood.

“Please, Father,” she called as she rode up. He took the reigns of the horse and the girl slid off it, tears streaming. “He got kicked in the head shoeing a mule… You've got to help him, Father… He's all we've got in the world…”

She was right. Father Phillip knew the girls had no grandparents, and their mother had lost her life giving life to their little brother. Lilith was a hale and capable girl, but not yet a woman herself, and she could not run a household and tend to her younger siblings entirely alone.

She helped the priest get the man off the horse and bring him indoors, laying him on the cot in the makeshift infirmary. He got out his stethoscope, and listened intently.

There was no rise and fall to his chest, and the priest could not make out a heartbeat.

“Can you help him, Father?” the girl pleaded. “Am… Am i too late?”

Father Phillip touched the girl's cheek kindly. “My child… Never give up hope.”

He gathered supplies hastily. They had told him that it was a sin, that it was an affront to heaven to play with life and death like this, that only God himself should weild such power…

But, if the power existed in the world, the priest reasoned, was it not meant to be used? Surely it was more of a sin to allow these children to fall into poverty and perhaps death themselves. It could not be evil to assist this child and her family. To help them secure their livelihood.

At any cost.

“I will not have been excommunicated for nothing,” Father Phillip whispered as he spread open the pages of the tome on necromancy he had procured, and began to recite the incantation.


End file.
